Marathon County officials heard a conceptual financing presentation on Nov. 1 outlining two principal ways to address a projected $20 million funding gap for a proposed $50 million highway shop: issue debt or use recurring revenues from North Central Healthcare.

Administrator Lance Leonard prefaced the discussion as exploratory. "This is just to stimulate some thought, and I wanna allay any overly overexcitement about the prospect," Leonard said, emphasizing that the committee was not being asked to act that day.

Kristen Hansen of financial adviser PFM presented two scenarios. Under the borrowing example, staff modeled issuing roughly $20.33 million in general obligation promissory notes using a conservative 5% interest assumption; PFM showed annual principal-and-interest payments of about $1.6 million on a 20‑year schedule and estimated $9 million–$11 million in interest expense over the life of the borrowing. "We're using an interest rate of 5%," Hansen said during the slides.

The alternative would be to use the county’s annual payments from the North Central Healthcare repayment agreement to finance the project over about five years rather than issuing new long‑term debt. That approach would avoid most interest costs but would take several years to accumulate the necessary cash flows and would limit the county’s ability to use those revenues to reduce existing debt levies in the near term.

Hansen also noted a recent law change that allows counties to issue general obligation promissory notes for up to 20 years (previously limited to 10), which affects the structure and term of possible borrowing. The presentation included historical equalized value trends, existing outstanding debt and debt‑service schedules, and illustrative mill‑rate impacts under the modeled scenarios.

Committee members asked staff to return with a more detailed, hybrid plan that would examine schedule‑of‑values, cash‑flow timing, short‑term borrowing options to bridge construction payments, and multi‑year levy ramp alternatives intended to minimize sudden tax‑rate shocks. Leonard and finance staff agreed to circulate the PFM slides and to develop options for further committee review prior to 2027 budget work.